Fourth Amendment
U.S. v. Monroe History Introduction

- Official AF business
- Limited textual & morale messages

US v Monroe (Note: The current DoD required banner is much more extensive than this and should be the one used on all DoD systems.)
The lead military case in the area of the Fourth Amendment as applied to computer searches is United States v. Monroe, 52 M.J. 326 \(CAAF 2000\). This case involved the search of a serviceman\'s email account, located on an electronic mail host owned by the United States Air Force that allowed a user to access the Defense Data Network and the Internet through a logon and private password. Accounts were available for official business, although users were allowed to use them to send and receive limited textual and morale messages to and from friends and family. Each time a user logged on to the email host, he or she received a banner message stating, "USERS LOGGING ONTO THIS SYSTEM CONSENT TO MONITORING BY THE HOSTADM." Incoming email messages were normally sent to a directory on the host where they would be read, sorted, and sent to the recipient’s email account by a computer program. Certain messages, such as those that were defective or of excessive size, were not sent and accumulated in the directory. They were then deleted after 72 hours. On the occasions where software errors prevented this automatic deletion, the host system slowed considerably.

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